House Rules from Game Master

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My map isn’t heavily distorted to fit too many kind of units. I am favour to add new units if only absolutely needed. But Italy and China have units with similar Mech stats to diversify their options.

The scale is the thing that most bedevils me.

I was recently watching some commentary on house rules from [b]Lion in the Trenches[/b], who was reacting to suggestions that he place an Austrian cruiser in the Sea Zone off Tsingtao in his Global 1914 customization. He made the point that a single Austrian cruiser doesn’t scale with the squadron or fleet implied by the corresponding game piece.

By my estimate, Global 1940 models ground units at the level of army corps, naval units at the level of fleets or task forces, and air forces at the level of wings. There are a handful of exceptions for colonial detachments, such as the two starting British Infantry in Kwangtung (Hong Kong), which stand in for about 14,500 defenders historically. India’s potential as a source of colonial manpower is significantly curtailed by the British Empire’s income problems, and Australia often explodes in production by the end game (win or lose) even when their national manpower pool and industrial capacity would never have allowed it.

In my opinion, scale should be balanced rigorously against the opportunity for fun gameplay. In my Global War games, I always add a French Infantry in Indochina, for example. There is also a clear movement in favor of bulking up the Dutch presence in the East Indies when games of Global War are played, and many players prefer to give the Italian fleet-in-being a fighting chance with set-up variants to blunt the Taranto Raid.

@SouthsideCH:

It seems every time we play there are certain things we just don’t understand. While we understand the rules sometimes they just do not seem rational.

Does anyone have house rules addressing the following?

Artillery supporting infantry during an amphibious assault.

If I move a sub or a destroyer-less navy into a convoy sea zone, forcing the enemy to submerge, why can they convoy me?

It does not make much sense that scramblers are defenders, especially in some cases involving tac bombers.

I get that Kamikaze attacks have to choose their target. But if I bring in 3 cruisers, 2 battleships and a carrier and they choose to hit the battleships, shouldn’t the cruisers get to bombard? They can’t take part in the defense against the Kamikaze.

Convoy Disruption seems easy. There are no ill effects to the disruptor. If you can intercept when facilities are being attacked it makes sense a navy in that sea zone should be able to do the same.

I would love to hear some input on these as well as any house rules ideas.

In terms of house rules, are you looking for balance or realism?

I always argue realism before balance so.

1:No, Artillery should not be able to support infantry during sea invasion, that’s why battleships should be used.

2:I argue they should. The sea territory is vase and submarines are loved during WWII because they are a pain to track down, they are basically the naval sniper.

3: I am not sure the exact issue. Fighters and Tacts can be used offensively and scramble protects your navy. I personally think all allied aircraft should scramble regardless of what nations navy is being attack as long as the nations allows it.

4: Kamikaze wings traditionally went after Battleships and Aircraft Carriers first because taking those out would give the IJN fairness as the IJN had a lot of smaller ships. I personally think Kamikaze wings should also be allowed to target transports.

5: So what’s the issue with Convoy Raids then? It makes you force yourself to deal with an enemy navy.

There’s no official answer that I know of.  A&A is such an abstracted game that, in one sense, it would be meaningless to say that game unit X corresponds to real-world military (or naval) formation Y.  Given the scope of A&A Global 1940, however, the various unit types on the map would roughly correspond to large formations if we were to assume that the allocation of units in the rules corresponds to real WWII numbers.  As an example, Germany’s invasion of the USSR was carried out with over 150 divisions – so from that perspective, the small number of sculpts on the actual board could at best only correspond to army groups.  At that level, it shouldn’t even be possible to differentiate between the components of the army groups, nor even of their consitutent armies or corps; the highest-level tank formations in WWII were, I think, armoured divisions and (one level further down) tank brigades.  So one way to look at the game would be to imagine that we’re not actually seeing the military formations themselves, but rather a patchwork picture showing some of the elements of those formations, with some of these elements being high-level ones and others being lower-level ones (like tank brigades).

Thanks I will check it out.

Hi, just want to shear a simple, but fun FFA house rule. You can have quik matches that only takes a few hours.

This has only been played on the anniversary addition.

pick a nation (has nothing more to say than what color you start with) through dices to establish who starts. pick any country value 1-6 you want to start in, role a dice, if the dice shows more or equal to the country you picked you place a factory and an AA, and your turn ends. If your dice role is less than the value of the starting country, you can’t place anything, and you turn ends. This is only for the starting country. each country you want to capture you have to fight that country’s value worth of infantry (a 1 value country, fight one infantry. 10 value country fight 10 infantries) optional: if you want a faster game, and more initiative to attack each other, and encourage allies against the strongest, you can set victory condition: reaching the end of the (72) income table.
-you don’t play with national objectives, other that that movement/combat rules are the same

Plz tell me what you think, or have any improvement suggestions. Have tried this a couple of times and it’s really enjoyable.

Ok then, I have created an example document I could use. Tell me if this is about the same as what you were suggesting.

Phase 5: Collection phase
In this phase, you earn production, railroad capacity, increase research, check national moral/unity, and add manpower.

IPCs: look up your power�s national production level (indicated by your control marker) on the National Production Chart. This is the amount of IPC income you have generated. Collect that number of IPCs from the bank by having the banker add it to the total number of IPCs in your powers treasury.

If your capital is under an enemy power�s control, you can�t collect income.

Convoys: any convoy that resides in the port of an original regional territory you control, you may remove it and collect 2 additional IPCs for every convoy removed in this manner.

Railroad capacity: check how much railroad capacity you currently have and your maximum railroad capacity. Now collect railroad capacity until you reach your maximum.

Increase research: add research to each field of research equal to the amount of research you currently have in that sector. Also check if you have completed any piece of research.

Check national moral/unity: check how many IPCs you have collected in this phase. Now check the amount of IPCs you started the game with. Now use a calculator and put in:

(Starting amount of IPCs) � (current national unity by percentage) =

If the final outcome is lower than the amount of IPCs you just collected, then your nation has officially surrendered and you must now follow standard surrendering rules. (P.?)

Adding man power: increase the man power of territories you own (not contested) and increase the man power their by the amount referenced in the man power chart.

@WILD:

So as the defender you bring in 2 reinf 2nd wave. The attacker doesn’t like the odds and has no eligible units to reinf so he retreats. The defender would then have to pull his 2 reinf units back and they would be idle for 1 complete round? Sounds like a good bluff and you might hold on to the country. Keeping track of idle units might be hard, because you could end up with several nations with idle units causing some confusion. Don’t get me wrong I like the idea of the defender having options for reinforcements or retreat. I think its silly to think the defender would just sit there and let the enemy dictate the battle with out using all his resources. Maybe someone else will chime in with an idea or two.

yeah hopefuly